Tiangong 1: another extreme image (29 Mar. 2018)

After we imaged and shared it live with the world yesterday, we tried to capture the Tiangong 1 space station again this morning, succeeding in our effort. Here it is this,again, this stunning view of the Chinese space station, during one of its final orbits around us.

The Tiangong 1 Chinese Space Station: 29 Mar. 2018

The image above comes from a single, 0.1-seconds exposure, remotely taken with the 16″-f/3.75 Tenagra III (“Pearl”) robotic unit in Arizona, available as part of the partnership between the Virtual Telescope Project (Italy) and Tenagra Observatories (Arizona, USA). The image scale is 2.4″/pixel.

At the imaging time, the Tiangong 1 space station was at about 192 km of altitude, about half of the altitude of the International Space Station (ISS), and moving with a speed of more than 28.000 km/hour.

This is the last pass visible from Arizona before the expected reentry date (1 April 2018).

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